


Another one's voice

by Morganevenstar



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Books, Crime, Drugs, F/M, Fluff, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-30
Updated: 2015-07-16
Packaged: 2018-03-09 17:21:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 17,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3258116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morganevenstar/pseuds/Morganevenstar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When mysterious cups of coffee start to appear at the desks of the BAU-members, Reid gets help with his drug addiction from an unexpected new friend. Slowly this new girl manages to steal the hearts of everyone in the office, but most of all Reid's. Maybe their friendship will even grow into something else..</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. hot brewed mystery

**Author's Note:**

> I'm writing this fanfic purely because I like the characters and the story, so if you don't like it, please turn your attention to something else (although constructive critisism about my writing technique itself is always appreciated of course! and I aaaalways love to get a message if you liked my fic!!) I really hope you enjoy it!  
> ps. please do not use anything from this fanfic without asking me

Something everyone at the BAU always complained about was the coffee, so when Prentiss arrived at the office, she was very surprised to find a big, damping cup sitting on her table. She sniffed it cautiously. It smelled good, and it was definitely not from the coffee-machine in the office. She dropped her bag on the floor and took a sip; it was still hot, but just cooled down enough to drink. She took another sip. It tasted even better than it smelled and she closed her eyes for a moment, feeling the substance warm her body that was stiff from the cold outside.  
“It’s good, right?” she heard from behind, “Hotch should bring these along more often.” She turned around and saw Morgan raising an identical cup to her. 

“Did Hotch bring these?” Prentiss found that very hard to believe. Agent Hotchner did not seem like a man who would give himself, much less the whole team, a treat, without a very good reason to be celebrating. Then again, she never quite knew what was going on in his mind, since his face was an unreadable mask. Morgan shrugged. “I suppose so... Reid says it wasn’t him, Rossi and JJ aren’t at the office yet and Hotch has been in his office all morning.”  
“Couldn’t it have been Garcia then?”  
Morgan grinned. “Nah, just plain cups of coffee? No note or anything? Not her style. Trust me, if Garcia had bought you coffee, you’d know.”

Reid appeared next to Morgan, holding a cup similar to the others and joined the conversation. “It’s really good coffee, though.” He held up the cup so Prentiss could see the logo printed on the paper cup-sleeve. She recognised it to be from a pretty fancy coffee shop a few blocks away. “Did you know,” Reid said with a little chuckle, in a tone of voice that warned Prentiss and Morgan to end the conversation. “The reason this coffee tastes so good is probably because-”  
“Please, Reid, no fun facts or statistics this early in the morning,” Prentiss interrupted him, holding up her hand “I just want to enjoy this coffee and start making my way through this huge pile of paperwork,” she said and turned away towards her desk.

“Yeah, right, sorry,” Reid said, his mouth pulling into his characteristic awkward smile. Morgan chuckled and gave him a friendly tap on the back before sitting down at his own desk. Prentiss already felt sorry for cutting Reid’s story off like that, so she smiled at him warmly. Sometimes she felt like she was too harsh on the kid - especially considered she was the new member of team - but she’d learned very soon that he could talk for an absurd amount of time about the most boring things. Compared to Hotchner, Reid was an open book, but still she couldn’t begin to imagine what went on in his mind. She turned her thoughts towards the big pile of work in front of her. Gloomily she looked into her almost-empty coffee cup. She sighed. They were gonna need a lot more of that coffee today. 

They had been working in silence for almost an hour, when an agitated-looking Hotchner came sweeping into the office. “Sorry I’m late,” he said, a little out of breath and mumbled something about traffic before he disappeared into his office. Prentiss, Reid and Morgan looked at each other.  
“I thought you said-” “I thought Hotch was-” Morgan and Prentiss started at once. Prentiss pointed towards the door through which Hotch had disappeared, puzzled, then pointed towards the paper cup on her table, looking at it as if it might explode. “If not Hotch.... who bought this coffee?”  
Morgan shrugged and Reid pulled a face that indicated he didn’t have the slightest idea and went back to work. Prentiss threw one more suspicious look at the paper cup, then shrugged it off. She already had enough problems to solve. 

As it turned out, the mystery of the coffee would not be solved that day, or in any of the following weeks. At first, it was one of the hot topics in the bau when the conversations were not about work, because every three days or so, there would appear new cups on the desks of everyone in the bau. Once they’d ruled everyone inside the bau out as suspects, they kind of hit a dead end. They knew it was someone who worked in the office, someone who often came early to work, but with the size of the quantico office and the amount of people working in the early hours it was like looking for the metaphorical needle.  
The coffee itself was not much of a clue either, as it was bought in a shop closely to the office. One time, the coffee-angel -as Prentiss had come to call their anonymous benefactor- had left a small note, explaining the reason for the anonymous gifts. “As an appreciation of all your good work. You never know how the day’s gonna end, hope this at least gives you a good start.” was all it said. Reid enthusiastically started to analyse the handwriting, but Prentiss laughed and took the note from him, crumpling it. “Come on, Reid. This person is clearly a secret admirer, who likes to stay anonymous. Just enjoy the coffee and let it be.” She sat down and threw the crumpled note in the trashbin.  
Reid pouted a little, but continued to work, mindlessly sipping from his coffee. After what only felt like minutes - but had probably been hours - he took up his cup again, only to find it empty. He tore his gaze away from his work and suddenly noticed how much his eyes and shoulders were burning. He yawned and cracked his neck. How was it possible his eyes were already feeling so heavy, when it hadn’t even been midday yet? Maybe it was the nightmares that kept him up at night. He shook his head as if to clear it from the images that had come with the thought of his nightmares. He stood abruptly and announced he was going to get more coffee. Once he was in the little kitchen, he leaned against the sink, his eyes closed, as he waited for the coffee machine to produce its water-like product. When the rattling noise of the ancient machine finally died out, he eagerly took a swig from the coffee. The taste was terrible and the hot liquid burned his throat, but immediately he felt the caffeïne clearing up his mind. He sighed with relief and blinked a few times, both to push back tears that were welling up because of the pain in his throat and to get rid of his last bit of sleepiness. He knew he couldn’t live on a caffeïne-high forever, but he didn’t want to sleep. Yet. At least he had to hold it up until he got home. 

He turned to go back to his desk and suddenly bumped into someone. “Oh, shit..” he managed to say just before the coffee gulped over the side of his cup. The girl shrieked, jumping back in an effort not to get the coffee all over her clothes. “Oh noooo, no no no” Reid moaned, frantically looking around the kitchen for something to clean the mess up with. “It’s okay,” she said. “It’s only on my hands, don’t worry. Although you might wanna get something to clean up this carpet.” He eyed her suspiciously. She looked slightly shaken and scowled as she shook the hot coffee off her hands, but at least she didn’t seem mad at him. 

“Are you sure you’re okay? That coffee was pretty hot... oh god, you should hold your hands under cold water, or you’ll get burns or.. oh my god, I’m so sorry, are you sure you’re not hurt?” The girl walked up to the sink and calmly held her hands in the stream of water. “Yes, I’m sure I’m okay,” she said over her shoulder, smiling at him reassuringly. He cautiously glared at her hands, checking for red burns, not knowing what to do. She started to open the cabinets with one hand, the other one still in the water, searching for a towel or something. Reid immediately rushed to her aid. 

“I think there’s a towel here somewhere... here it is. I’ll clean up the floor, you just... you just keep your hands under that cold water okay?” His cheeks were burning red with shame and he was pretty sure his voice sounded much more high-pitched than usual. The girl was actually laughing now and he relaxed a little. She really didn’t seem to be hurt. The girl found another towel in one of the cabinets while he cleaned up and dried her hands with it. When he was done, she took the dirty towel from his hands and replaced it with his now half-empty coffeecup. “I don’t know how you can even drink that stuff, but here you go.” she said with a warm smile he definitely didn’t feel he deserved right now. “Thank you,” he said, a little awkwardly. 

For the first time, he really looked at the girl. She was about 8 inches shorter than him, with a pretty face and plain but cute-looking clothes. He didn’t recall ever having seen her before, and was painfully aware that throwing boiling hot coffee over a girl does not exactly make a good first impression. “You’re right, this stuff tastes terrible, but it keeps you awake.” He looked in his cup again and decided he could do with a refill. He was not going to make it through the day on only what little coffee there was left in his cup. The girl snorted at his comment. “Yeah, sure. So does sleep.” 

He shrugged and turned to the sink, restarting the coffee machine. “Can I make you something?” he offered her, still a little awkward. “No, it’s okay. You just go back to your work, with your disgusting coffee. I’ll make myself a cup of tea.” She said ‘disgusting coffee’ with a playful, lopsided smile, to let him know she was joking. Reid smiled back and raised his eyebrows. “Oh, so you do drink tea? Like, what exactly is the difference in that? It’s both hot drinks made out of a combination of water and plants. Are you british?” 

“No, I’m not british! I just don’t really like the taste of coffee. It’s so bitter. Although I do like coffee when it’s, you know, really good coffee.The coffee from this machine tastes like it’s been flushed through the toilet first.” Reid made a face. “Okay, yeah, thank you. I really needed that to make my imagination flow.” She laughed. Reid noticed he found it hard to resist laughing with her. Her laugh was a very pleasant sound. “Sorry. But it’s not the only coffee you get here, right? I’ve heard some things about a secret benefactor who buys you guys coffee?” There was something odd about the way she asked it, almost too casual, but Reid thought he was surely imagining it. Reid pulled his fingers through his hair. “Yeah, that’s true. That’s, um, really good coffee, actually. Have you been getting them too?” She shook her head. “No, I work for administration, so I’m not often in this part of the office. I was only here to take a break.” She didn’t look at him; she was too busy finding herself a cup and some teabags. “ I’d really like to know who is giving us those...” Reid said as he stared off in the distance. The coffee machine and water cooker both stopped. Before Reid could even move the girl poured herself a steaming cup of tea and handed him his coffee. “So, here’s your coffee.” 

Was it just him, or did it look like she was blushing? “I guess I’ll see you around, then.” She smiled at him, and before he could say anything she walked away. “Wait..” he started weakly, confused. He wanted to call after her, but suddenly realized he didn’t even know her name. She turned around the corner and was gone, out of sight. Slightly dazed with this strange encounter he went back to his desk. “You okay?” Prentiss asked him, when she saw his pondering look. “Yeah.. yeah, I’m fine.” Reid answered. For a split second he thought about telling the story to the rest of the team, asking Morgan if he might now the girl’s name, but decided against it. They’d probably only tease him with it forever. Not that he liked the girl or anything, but it was somehow nagging at him that he didn’t know her name. He sighed and sat down at his desk, rubbing his eyes, and shook the thought of the girl out of his head.


	2. First talks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reid speaks to the girl again, and this time he learns a lot more about her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry it took me so long to write. I'm not sure I entirely like how this chapter turned out but oh well. (also I don't have any idea yet of where to start the next chapter, so be prepared for another long wait..... sorry :/) anyway, Kyo, this one is for you! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

It wouldn’t be until several weeks later that Reid saw the girl again. She had hardly been in his thoughts, but that wasn’t very surprising considering the size of the worries that came with his work. In the first days after their encounter he’d felt an odd sense of expectation every time he went to get a cup of coffee, but she was never there and soon the memory started to fade. 

He hadn’t thought of her for weeks, almost, when he found her talking to Morgan next to the sink. She stood with her back towards him and he heard her laugh at something Morgan had said. Again he felt a strange tugging at the corners of his mouth at the sound, a strange urge to laugh along, even though he hadn’t heard the joke. 

He faltered. He didn’t want to interrupt their conversation, or worse, be dragged into it by Morgan. Talking with Morgan alone was fine, but talking with Morgan to other people always made Reid feel awkward and clumsy. Morgan was always so social and funny and capable of making everyone like him, making Reid look even more socially incapable than usual. 

Besides, if he’d join their conversation, Morgan would want to know how Reid and the girl had met before. Reid could already hear the way Morgan would tease him with the fact his first encounter with this cute girl was to throw a cup of coffee over her. He considered trying to slip past, ignoring them, but realised that that would be slightly odd too. In his moments of indecisiveness, Morgan caught sight of him, leaving Reid no choice but to walk up to them and say hello. 

“Here’s our boy genius!” Morgan exclaimed, as he literally dragged Reid into the conversation, his arm draped around his friend’s shoulders as if to show him off to this new girl. As soon as Reid entered her view he saw her face lit up with recognition. Reid smiled at her and waved awkwardly, before putting his hands in his pockets. “A genius?” she said, one eyebrow arched, sceptical. Her words were addressed to Morgan, but her eyes were fixed on Reid, who saw by the mischievous look on her face that she was very amused Morgan didn’t know they’d already met. With fearful anticipation he waited for what she would say next.

“Well, perhaps it makes sense. Aren’t geniuses always said to be slightly clumsy?” she said and winked at Reid, whose cheeks were embarrassingly red. Morgan looked confused. “Wait,” he said, looking back and forth between Reid and the girl, “you two have met?” 

“Well, yes, we’ve met.. but we were never properly introduced, were we?” the girl said, still looking at Reid. “No, not exactly,” he replied, avoiding her eyes. Morgan took a step back and knitted his eyebrows. “I sense a lot of awkward energy here. Am I missing something?” 

“We bumped into each other a couple of weeks ago. Quite literally. And I might’ve... sort of... thrown a cup of coffee all over her?” Reid admitted awkwardly. Morgan stared at him a few seconds, checking if he was really serious, then bursted out laughing. He clapped him on his shoulder. “Well done, man” he said before turning to the girl. “You’re right, I’m afraid all of his brain cells are so busy controlling the wicked stuff going on in his mind, there’s not much left to control his physics.” 

The girl laughed, but stopped when she saw how embarrassed Reid looked. “No, it was my fault, really.” she said, to comfort him a little. “I startled him and he spilled some coffee. Most of it went on the floor tho, he hardly threw it over me.” 

“Yeah sure,” Morgan said, but Reid flashed her a thankful look. Now that she’d said this, Morgan would have less reason to tease Reid about the accident. 

“Either way, I suppose I should introduce you two properly now.” Morgan continued. “Reid, this is Elisabeth. Elisabeth, meet dr. Spencer Reid.” 

Elisabeth. So that was her name. Reid really like that. It reminded him of some old, english, victorian novel, which very much seemed to suit her. She was pretty in a modest way, with half-long brown hair framing her face and discrete make-up, but her features also had an adventurous and mischievous strike, like a character from a Jane Austen novel.

Her eyebrows shot up again. “Doctor? Wow. So what do you hold a PhD in?” 

Morgan chuckled. “What doesn’t he hold a PhD in is a better question.” She saw Reid’s eyes light up now the conversation had averted from his clumsiness to something he could talk about. 

“Well, there are actually a lot of subjects I don’t know that much about yet. I do have PhD’s in Math’s, chemistry, engineering and I hold BA’s in psychology and sociology, though. And I’m currently getting my PhD in philosophy.” He summed all this up with a half-modest, half-proud, look on his face. 

It was the look of someone who loved to talk about his interests, but had been brought down for it by jealous people too many times, Elisabeth thought to herself. Of course she’d already heard about the boy genius that worked in the bau -actually, everyone in the bau team was close to famous, in the “lower” parts of the quantico office- but she had always thought that those rumors were slightly exaggerated. 

“That’s... really impressive” she told him and Morgan beamed at her, seeming even more proud of Reid’s accomplishments than Reid himself. “So, you’re like, what, some sort of prodigy?” 

Reid shrugged, but Morgan, who had draped his arm around Reid’s shoulders again, intervened. “Yeah, he has this IQ of I don’t know what, 300 or something?” He pulled up his eyebrows, indicating to Reid that it was his turn to correct him and show off a little to this pretty girl. 

“I have an IQ of 187, actually,” Reid gave in, pulling free from Morgan’s grip. “I have an eidetic memory and I can read 20,000 words per minute” he added reluctantly, not wanting to sound immodest. After all, unlike his PhD’s, his eidetic memory was not one of his accomplishments, but just something he’d been born with. 

“20,000 per minute?” she exclaimed, her eyes wide with horror, mixed with admiration. “Then how long does it take you to read a full book? Ten minutes?” 

Reid laughed. “Well, usually a little longer than ten. But not much.” 

“Not any fiction I hope.”

“Not much, no,” Reid said. “Why?” 

“You can’t read a fictional book at that pace. It’s simply unethical,” she said, shaking her head.  
Morgan laughed. “What, there’s ethics on reading books, now, too?” he said with a face that seemed to say I can’t believe these nerds.  
“Yes!” she said, clearly very distressed that both Morgan and Reid seemed to find this okay. “That’s like watching a movie in fast-forward! Do you do that too?” 

“No, of course not! My brain just processes the words really fast, I really can’t read any slower, it would drive me crazy.”

Elisabeth shook her head in unbelief. “You’re really missing out,” she told him. “You’re not supposed to just read a book, you’re supposed to live it.”

“Okay, that’s it, I’m out.” Morgan said, holding his hands up in a surrendering motion. “This is too much geek for me.”

“You don’t like reading? Let me guess, you just watch the movie. Especially a lot of action movies, the really bad ones with Tom Cruise and no real plot,” Elisabeth said. “But sometimes,” she continued, “as a guilty pleasure, you read one of those bad science fiction, or, no wait, one of those terribly cheesy romance novels.”

“Well, you got me there. You sure you’re not a profiler?” Morgan joked. 

Elisabeth placed her hands on the counter behind her and hopped onto it. “So.. what are your favorite movies?” she said, leaning slightly forward, as if they were discussing secrets. 

Morgan shrugged. “I don’t know.. slaughterhouse five, maybe.” 

“I thought it was.. wait, what was that romantic comedy with Jennifer Aniston you were talking about lately? It was something about-” Morgan stopped Reid by hitting him on the back of his head. “shut up, kiddo.” Reid smiled smugly, happy that for a change, Morgan was the one feeling embarrassed.

“So, what’s yours?” the girl asked him. 

He thought hard, forming an adorable crease in his forehead. “Ehm, well.. I don’t know. Star wars, maybe?” he said, with an almost apologetic look. 

She laughed out loud. “Of course. I could have guessed that, I suppose.” 

“Now tell us what your favorite movie is, wise girl.” Morgan said. She gave them a crooked smile. “Nah, I’ll leave it up to you to guess.”

“pff. That’s unfair-” Morgan started, but was interrupted by Emily Prentiss, who walked up to them. “What is taking you so long to make that coffee?” Then she saw Elisabeth, who quickly hopped down from the counter and extended her hand at the stylish profiler. “Hi, I’m Elisabeth,” she introduced herself. “I work in administration. Morgan and Reid were just explaining to me how smart exactly your pet genius here is.” 

“Pet genius?” Reid mumbled, a little distraught, but Emily laughed and shook Elisabeth’s hand. “Hi, nice to meet you. I’m afraid I need my little genie back at his desk, though.” 

“That’s alright.” Elisabeth told her. “I have to get back to my desk too, anyway.” She turned towards Reid and Morgan and gave them a small curtsy. “Gentlemen.” she said. “It has been a pleasure talking to you.”

“Yeah,” Morgan said. “I’m sure we’ll talk again sometime.” and he walked away to his desk, followed by Emily. Elisabeth turned to walk away, but Reid called after her. 

“Wait, don’t you want your coffee? Oh no, wait, I mean tea. You drink tea.” 

She turned around and saw him holding out a cup that was probably already stone-cold, but she smiled warmly at him and walked back.  
“Thank you,” she said as she took the cup from him. Her hand briefly touched his and she felt her cheeks turn slightly red. Their eyes met and they both quickly looked away, bashful. 

“So, um, I see you around then, right?” Reid said as he started to walk away backwards. 

“Yeah, definitely.” 

He put his hands in his pockets, only to take one out again to give her his characteristic awkward little wave. She waited for him to turn around before she walked back to her own department. 

She downed the cold, far too strong tea quickly and washed the terrible taste of it away with some water. Her smile, however, didn’t seem to be washed away as easily. 

She could feel it on her face for days, just as she kept feeling that brief moment of when their hands had touched, over and over.


	3. gossip and caffeine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elisabeth and Garcia hold a gossip session

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is a little shorter than the previous two, but I figured I wouldn't let you wait any longer since part two of this chapter (which I'm now going to write) is quite separate from this part of the chapter. I hope y'all enjoy it!

“Good morning,” Elisabeth said as she carefully pushed open the door to Garcia’s lair. She peeked around the corner to check if the company-nerd was already at her desk and was not disappointed.  
"Good morning darling" Garcia greeted her, in a whirl of blond hair and purple lipstick. "You're early."

"You're early! Or did you sleep here again? Wait, you have slept tonight, haven't you?" She replied as she guntly pushed open the door a little further. 

Garcia laughed. "No worries, I did sleep tonight, actually, in my own bed."  
"Good. All of you guys get too little sleep if you ask me. Anyway, here's your coffee," Elisabeth answered as she held out a steaming cup towards her, which Garcia eagerly accepted.   
“You are an angel,” she said, stressing each word. She took a sip and moaned. “This coffee is so good I almost feel guilty accepting it. Almost.”

Elisabeth looked at Garcia, who was wearing a dark purple vest that seemed to be made out of a former muppet, a lilac dress and pink high heels and shook her head.

Garcia saw her looking. "What?" 

"Nothing. I just don't get how you can be this early and still look so amazing. Like, aren't you tired in the morning? I already have trouble applying my mascara after I've woken up." 

Garcia laughed. "Awe, you look great too! But I can’t deny it’s my special power, girl. Besides my bedazzling computer skills I have also been blessed with permanent style. I just wake up and BOOM all my clothes and make-up are on spot." 

“yeah, I bet you do.” 

Garcia took another sip of her coffee. “The others still don’t know it’s you, right?” she said, with twinkling eyes. 

Elisabeth, who knew what the extravagant tech-girl was referring to, nodded, while her cheeks colored slightly red. “They don’t even suspect it’s me.”

“I love having a secret. I haven’t even blapped anything about it to Morgan! And that’s a first. I never manage to keep anything from him.”

Elisabeth sat down on Garcia’s desk. “It’s not really a secret,” she objected. “I just haven’t had the time to tell them. Besides, wouldn’t that be a bit odd now? Like, hi, yeah you’ve known me for a couple of months now, but I never found occasion to tell you that I am actually the one bringing you coffee every week. They’d think I was a creep for not telling them earlier.” 

Garcia raised her eyebrows. “You haven’t had time to tell them? Right... not even in all your conversations with Reid?” she said in a suggestive tone.

“What do you mean?’ 

“Nothing! Just that you and wonderboy seem to get along pretty well. Aw, look, you’re blushing! You like him!” 

Elisabeth shook some of her hair in front of her face to hide her blush but she couldn’t quite hide the big goofy smile that took over her face when she thought of Reid.

Garcia was right, she had been talking to Reid a lot. She went to the bau kitchen to get tea as often as she could and she had found that, after a while, Reid seemed to be there every time, as if they had an unspoken agreement to meet each other there. Sometimes Morgan was there too and she’d talked to Prentiss a couple of times, but meeting Reid was what she looked forward to every day. 

As it turned out, they had a lot in common. They could talk endlessly about movies or books they liked, or languages or just anything at all that interested them. 

They’d had a lengthy discussion over who they thought was the best doctor: Reid preferred the old series of doctor who and thought the fifth was best, but Elisabeth, a true tennant fan, disagreed. They’d hold these kind of discussions until either Prentiss or Morgan came to tell them the break was over. It was always over too soon.

She sighed. “Well, I can’t deny I don’t like talking to him, but that’s it, Penelope. Besides, don’t you have better things to do than gossip?” she said and gave her a stern look.

Garcia rolled her eyes. “Fine, whatever you want darling. But if anything happens between you two, I’d be the first to know, right? You know I live on gossip. I need it almost as much as I need your coffee.”

Elisabeth laughed. “Sure. You’d be the first. Now we both better start working.”

“You’re right,” Garcia sighed as she turned her chair towards her desk. “Say hi to my man and to wonderboy for me if you see them on your way out, okay?”

“Will do. See ya, Penelope.”


	4. gossip and caffeine part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I felt like this chapter and the last one were more like one chapter, so I named it chapter 3.2 and it's filled with even more gossip and coffee
> 
> man, I should've called this fic coffee in quantico or something lol  
> anyway, enjoy!

Maybe talking with Garcia about her talks with Reid was bad luck, because since that morning they had become more rare. At first she blamed it on his job; she knew the bau team was very busy, but soon his distant manner made doubt creep up on her. What if she’d misread their conversations? She didn’t want to be one of those sad colleagues everyone just talks to out of pity. 

However, she couldn’t seem to stop herself from coming to the bau part of the office in her breaks.

Today she found it deserted. She tried her best to come across nonchalant, not to show she was disappointed Reid wasn’t there. 

“Hey there Jones. Waiting for someone?”

She jumped. Concentrating on making tea and not looking over to Reid’s desk had taken all her effort, so she hadn’t noticed someone walking up to her from behind. 

It was Morgan. Of course it was Morgan. Ever since he’d found out her last name, he’d been calling her Jones, “because it sounded more badass”. She turned around and tucked a strand of hair that had fallen in front of her face behind her ear. 

“Hey,” she said, with a slightly forced smile. Morgan always made her feel a bit uncomfortable. In a group conversation he was nice enough, but he radiated a kind of power that made her feel small and incompetent. He reminded her of “the cool kids” at her old school.

“No, I’m not waiting. I’m just making a cup of tea. Do I need to wait for someone in order to do that?” 

Morgan raised one of his absurdly pronounced eyebrows and smiled. “No of course not. Chill, girl. I didn’t mean anything with it.”

Elisabeth didn’t know what to say so she just laughed sheepishly and turned back to the cabinets, searching for tea. She changed her mind and turned back to Morgan again. 

“Do you want anything?” 

“Sure. Just coffee’s good. You know, I could ask Reid to come over here if you want.” 

Elisabeth felt her whole face become red so she buried it one of the cabinets again, pretending she was searching for coffee. 

“I told you, I’m just here to get a cup of tea.” She could hear how pathetic and weak her lie sounded, even though her voice was muffled by the wood of the cabinet. 

Morgan walked over to stand next to her and leaned against the sink, his arms folded over his chest. 

“I’m a profiler, remember. It’s kinda hard to keep things from anyone around here.” 

She didn’t look at him, but she could hear he was smiling. She sighed and turned around so they stood next to each other. 

“I know.”  
“Besides, I was at Garcia’s office this morning....” 

Elisabethe gasped. “Did she tell you...?”

“No, no, she didn’t break girl code. She didn’t tell me anything you said to her,” Morgan reassured her. “But, well... we might have exchanged some theories and suspicions.” 

Elisabeth moaned. “Seriously? This is what you guys talk about? Don’t you have better things to do? Man, this is like high school.” 

Morgan laughed. “Oh come on, cut us some slack. We gotta have something cute to talk about, right? Besides, romance in the office always stirs up a lot of things. You can’t escape the gossip.” 

“Yeah, sure, but I’m telling you, there is no romance here.” 

Morgan shrugged. “If you guys don’t want to admit it, I’m not gonna push you. But you know Garcia is. She is definitely not gonna stand by and watch you two be too awkward to admit anything to each other.” 

Elisabeth rolled her eyes and crossed her arms defiantly. “Fine. You can all obsess about us being friends. I don’t care. Besides, if we liked each other so much, I wouldn’t be talking to you right now, would I?” 

That came out more harsh than she’d meant it to and she flinched, knowing that she’d just shown to Morgan how much she actually cared.

His expression softened into an older-brother-look she’d only seen him have when he was looking at Reid. “Don’t worry about that, kiddo. I’m really sure he likes you,” he said. “Even if just in a platonic way,” he hastily added when he saw her expression. 

She chuckled. “Thanks. I mean, you’re a profiler, so I can basically trust you on this blindly, right?” she said, playfully sarcastic. 

“Exactly.” 

Then his expression darkened a little. “I don’t know what Reid’s problem is lately, to tell you the truth. Don’t think he doesn’t like you. He hasn’t been very talkative to any of us.” He looked off into the distance for a second, but then he seemed to shrug off his worry. “Anyway, I’m sure he’s just sleeping bad or something. We all do, sometimes. He’ll come around to it.” 

The coffee machine made a sound that indicated Morgan’s coffee was ready. He picked up his cup and handed her her tea. 

“I should be heading back.” he said and turned around, but Elisabeth stopped him.

“Wait, Morgan.” He turned back to her. She hesitated for a second. “Thanks.” she added.

Morgan nodded and she knew he knew she was not just talking about him handing her her tea. He winked at her and smiled warmly. “You’re welcome, Jones.”

She smiled back at him, and this time it was a genuine one. Maybe the tall dark man was a lot less intimidating than she’d thought after all.


	5. pushed away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elisabeth is worried about Reid

Something was definitely troubling Reid. Not that he was explicitly rude or upset, but he seemed constantly distracted and quiet, something that was very unusual for him. He did engage in conversations on the breaks, but only half-heartedly and only when the conversation was held between more than two people. 

Elisabeth knew the other team members must have noticed, but apparently they chose to ignore it. After her talk with Morgan, now two weeks ago, none of them had displayed any concern for Reid whatsoever. That is, not to her or Reid. She’d seen Morgan and Prentiss exchange looks, though, whenever Reid acted distracted or only gave a short answer on a subject he could usually talk about for hours. 

She’d considered trying to talk about it to someone, but felt like it would come across a little intrusive. After all, how well did she know them? She was no part of the team, and although Morgan had convinced her Reid did not dislike her, she wasn’t sure yet how much Reid did like her. 

Either way, Reid seemed to talk to everyone less and less and so Elisabeth came to seek him out less and less often. More and more, she stayed at her own desk, with some other women from administration who were nice. Nice, but not nearly as fascinating as the profilers, or as funny as Reid, Elisabeth thought as she mindlessly picked at her lunch, not quite listening to the gossip the women exchanged around her. 

“Lizzie?”

She looked up. It was her supervisor who had called her, a tall woman with cherry lipstick and a far too wide smile to be bringing good news, who seemed to give everyone these far too familiar sounding nicknames.

“Honey, I hate to ask you this, but Amanda has called in sick, so could you maybe work a couple of hours late? Thank you, you can just turn off the lights behind you, okay?”

Elisabeth sighed and nodded, her mind already wandering back to her concerns for Reid.

Later that day, long after dark, she was just about to leave when she remembered she’d left some papers in the printer at the BAU office. As she walked passed the large office she noticed there was still a light on in one of the office chambers. Assuming someone forgot to turn off the lights, she walked towards it, but she stopped when she saw there was somebody inside. She almost turned back to simply retrieve her papers, but something about the lonely figure seemed familiar. 

She walked up closer. It was Reid. What was he doing here so late? Usually Hotch was the last one to leave the office. She hesitated. Would she walk up to him? She was still not sure at what level of familiarity they were at, but the thought of him all alone in a dark office bothered her. On the other hand... were the talks they’d had enough to consider herself a friend of Reid’s? Maybe he didn’t feel that way at all. Maybe he just wanted to be left alone... 

For a few more moments she just stood there, then she decided she couldn’t stand the sight of his sad silhouette any longer and she walked up to the door. It was open. 

Standing in the doorway she looked at him; he seemed to be bent over some sort of file. “Reid?” she said, softly, as for not to startle him. He was startled anyway. His head jerked up, but he relaxed when he saw it was her. He gave her a smile, which was a notch too bright to be real.  
“Hey, ehm.. I was just.. finishing this. Hotch asked me to read this thing for him and I thought I could just work on for a little longer and analyse it, but I’ll be done in a minute and I'll close off behind me-” he started to ramble, his head down, his eyes meeting everything in the room except for Elisabeth.  
“Reid-” she started, but stopped herself. “Spencer,” she said instead, and when he heard her say his name he finally looked at her.  
“Are you okay?” she asked, holding his gaze.  
He swallowed and nodded. He scraped his throat and looked at his work again. “Yeah, sure,” he said, but his voice was too high, as it always was when he was lying.  
She looked at his face, the dark purple bags under his eyes, and she wondered how many nights he’d already spent at the office and how many nights it had been since he’d slept at all. 

“Okay.” Elisabeth said, not sure how to continue the conversation. It was clear that Reid didn’t want to talk about his problems. She turned to walk away, but stopped. She turned back towards him and sighed.  
“No, wait,” she corrected herself and Reid turned around to look at her. 

As she looked into his large green eyes, it struck her how sad they looked. She thought she saw a hint of desperation in them, like he was pleading her to help him, to ask through. 

It was that puppy look and something about the way his ever slightly-too-long hair swept over his forehead, making her long to put it back behind his ear, that made her bold. It shook something inside her loose and, in a moment of truthfulness she was sure she would regret later, she continued. “It’s not okay.”

Reid looked confused, but she was sure there was also a hint of hopefulness in his eyes, so she spoke on. “Look, I don’t know what is going on, but anyone can see that you’re dealing with something. Your team members, they care about you. A lot. But you guys work together so closely I suppose it gets hard to separate private life and work, so they would never ask you to tell them about personal things. But if you ever need to talk about anything...” she faltered when she saw Reid’s face had closed up again. 

He turned away from her. “Thank you,” he said, his voice a bit strained. “That’s a very kind offer and I appreciate it, but I’m fine.” 

“Are you?” Elisabeth was not convinced, not by far, and she was in too deep now to pretend she’d never asked anything, so she sat down in the chair next to him. She leaned towards him, trying to look him in the eye. 

“Because I don’t think you are. Something is bothering you.”

It wasn’t entirely true that she didn’t know what Reid’s problem was. There is gossip in every office and in the past months she’d heard several things about Reid’s past that could explain his behavior. Personally, she suspected it had something to do with the Tobias Hankel case the bau had worked about a year ago. 

Although nobody could confirm it for her, it seemed to be a well-known secret that this case had left Reid struggling with a drug addiction. Her colleagues who were gossiping about it told her he’d probably long conquered this addiction. If he hadn’t, Hotch wouldn’t have let him stay on the team, they’d said, but Elisabeth still suspected Reid’s struggles were drug-related. 

She knew a thing or two about addiction and she’d seen enough of people battling it to know what it looked like when someone was having a relapse of sorts, but she wanted Reid to tell her himself. 

“Look me in the eye and tell me you’re fine. I’ll believe you and leave you alone.” she said to him, hoping she was wrong about it all and he would convince her there was nothing wrong with him. She waited, holding her breath.

He didn’t look at her. 

“I can deal with it myself.” 

She let go of the breath she’d been holding and felt something inside her relax. Although he still refused her help, at least he had admitted something was bothering him. That’s a start, she thought to herself. 

“I know.” she assured him. “I know you can. But, the thing is, you don’t have to.”

Reid didn’t answer. Elisabeth waited for a few more moments. Finally Reid broke the silence. 

“I really have to finish this. Could you close the door on your way out?” 

His voice was steady, but his hands were slightly shaking. 

Elisabeth stood abruptly. Fine. Maybe he really didn’t want any help. Or, more likely, he didn’t want _her_ help. In silence she scolded herself for letting herself go like that. What would he think of her? What if he told everyone in the team how she’d bothered him about matters that were none of her business?

A wave of shame washed over her and she only managed to mumble a “Sorry. goodnight.” before she turned around and felt tears well up in her eyes. 

She pulled the door closed behind her and strode to the printer to retrieve her papers, frantically wiping the tears from her flaming cheeks. 

What she didn’t see was how Reid lowered his head into his hands as soon as she’d shut the door, silently cursing himself as well, for letting her walk away. She didn’t know he stayed up in the office half the night, but didn’t get any work done because the water in his eyes made the words in the files swim around. 

As she drove home through the dark night, she didn’t know that later that night, after he’d finally returned home, Reid would quietly whisper her name as he fell into a restless sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YOOO finally a new chapter!! for some reason I had a really hard time getting their conversation on paper, but i hope it turned out okay. Sorry for the sad ending, I promise happier stuff is on the way!


	6. a letter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reid appologizes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm soooo sorry for not writing for so long :( I can only hope you're all still interested in what happens with Elisabeth and Reid! enjoy the chapter!

The next day Elisabeth still felt mortified and she didn’t dare to come anywhere near the bau office that day. Or the next day. Or the one after that. She felt kind of bad for ignoring them like that, but she really didn’t feel like seeing Reid. On the third day, however, her screen suddenly froze while she was working. She almost called for someone to help her out - she wasn’t very good with computers anyway - but then a message appeared, taking over the whole screen. “IN MY OFFICE. NOW. ps. don’t worry, you’re not in trouble. Or, come to think of it, maybe you are. Just come. xx Garcia” it said. Elisabeth smiled to herself. She hesitated for a moment, but then decided that she was dying to talk to someone about what happened, someone who knew Reid. She gathered some papers, hoping everyone would just think she was going away from her desk to copy them, and headed to Garcia’s office. She almost doubled back when she thought about how excited Garcia would be to hear she and Reid had had a heart-to-heart, even though it had turned out pretty sour. She decided, however, that not talking to Garcia would make her feel even worse, so she walked on. The door flew open as soon as her hand hit the wood and Garcia appeared, colorful as ever. 

“There you are! I’ve been waiting for my coffee for ages!” Garcia said and winked. “Just kidding. I missed you girl! Why haven’t I seen you for days?” 

Elisabeth came in and made a face as she dropped in a chair. “I know. I’m sorry.” she said, very well aware that she was avoiding the question. Now that she was here, she couldn’t seem to bring herself to tell Garcia what happened. Fortunately, she didn’t have to. 

“What happened between you and Reid, honey?” Garcia said. “And don’t you go denying it, because I happen to have found this shoved under my door this morning.” she told Elisabeth as she held up a white envelope with her name written on it.

Elisabeth’s breath stopped for a moment. Was that a letter from...? 

Garcia seemed to read her thoughts and nodded, one eyebrow arched. “Yes, baby, I know that handwriting. Don’t worry, I didn’t open it!” After a second she added. “Okay, I might’ve held it against the light, but I didn’t see much. Just that he was sorry about something. What happened? Please don’t be mad at me for trying to read it.”

Elisabeth sighed. “I’m not mad. We... well, we didn’t exactly have a fight. But the other day I saw him still being in the office long after dark and I asked him if he was okay, because I’ve been kind of worrying about him lately. But apparently he doesn’t want anyone helping him so he snapped at me. Anyway, I’m sure that’s what he wanted to apologize for.”

Garcia looked at her with large, worrying eyes. “Oh no... wait, what do you mean you’ve been worrying?” 

“Haven’t you noticed he’s been acting strange lately? He just doesn’t really seem to be there most of the time. I was so sure something was bothering him....” she rubbed her eyes with the palm of her hand. “Anyway, can I have it?” She pointed at the letter which Garcia was still clutching in her hands. 

“Yeah, of course.” 

Garcia tried her best not to seem too curious as Elisabeth took the letter and opened it, but Elisabeth could feel her impatience. If she had to be honest with herself, she was very curious about the letter as well. 

Her heart raced as she unfolded the paper. A smile appeared on her face as she read the letter, written with a black fountain-pen, his handwriting slightly crooked and smudgy. 

‘I’m sorry,’ it started, ‘for snapping at you the other night. I didn’t mean to upset you.’ After that he’d crossed out a few sentences which she couldn’t make out anymore.

‘Thank you for wanting to help me. You were right about the team, that they would never interfere with my personal life.’ it continued.

‘You were also right about me. But I’m not good at asking for help, or accepting it. You’ve probably noticed that human interaction in general is not my strongest asset. So that’s why I kind of pushed you away, and again, I’m sorry. I like talking to you and I would really like to have your company a little more often. Maybe we’ll even turn out to be able to help each other with certain matters. That’s what friends do, right? Reid.’ 

Elisabeth bit her lip to prevent herself from breaking into a goofy smile. He wanted her to be his friend. 

“What? What does it say? Come on Lis, you have to tell me!” Garcia cried out. 

Elisabeth laughed. “It’s none of your business! But if you must know, he apologized and said he wanted to be friends.” 

“Ooooh, that’s so cute!” Garcia cooed. “So that means you’ll stop hiding from all of us here and hang out with baby genius more, right?” 

“I guess so.” Elisabeth said, her mind wandering off. 

“What are you waiting for? Go find your man!” Garcia said. “I love having your company here, but I have to get back to work anyway.” she said and shooed a sputtering Elisabeth out of her office.

“But, but....”

“No, I won’t have it! You’re going to talk to him right now!” 

Elisabeth sighed and gave in, but as soon as she turned around the corner she went back to her own desk, to think about what she would do next. Despite the letter she was far too nervous to talk to Reid. After a while she made up her mind and walked up to the kitchen of the BAU with a white envelope in her hand.

After her boss had finally told her she could leave, she went back to the coffee machine, where she found the envelope exactly as she’d left it. A wave of disappointment washed over her, but when she picked it up she found that it had been opened and the letter was gone. On the back of the envelope stood only one word, in a slightly crooked and smudgy handwriting. “Yes.” it said. 

\--

That evening when Elisabeth was home, the doorbell rang. Immediately her heart leaped in her chest and she wiped her hands on the dress she’d changed into. Partly anxious, partly excited, she walked up to the door. She took a deep breath and opened it. It was Reid.


	7. Noodles and secrets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reid comes over for dinner at Elisabeth's place and she might finally find out what has been bothering him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so finally a longer chapter and some cute reid/elisabeth interaction again :D I kind of like how this one turned out, I hope you guys enjoy it as well  
> Please please let me know what you think of it!!!  
> I really like to hear your opinions about the story :)

“Hey” she said as she looked at Reid, smiling. His curly hair was all ruffled up by the wind and a little wet from the drizzling rain that had been falling all day. He looked cold, with his hands in the pockets of his large felt coat and his collar turned up. 

“Hi,” Reid said timidly and he awkwardly smiled back, as if he wasn’t quite sure what he was doing here. A gust of wind came into the house and sent a shiver down her spine. 

“Come in,” she said quickly and stepped aside, rubbing her bare arms. 

Reid stepped past her into the little hallway. He looked around, still feeling a little lost, but also curious. It seemed like a nice enough apartment, although he could only see a glimpse from the living room and a few closed doors that probably led to her bed- and bathroom. 

“You can hang your coat here. You can keep your shoes on if you want. Of course you can. I just mean, some people really want you to take of your shoes, but I don’t mind. My carpet is dark anyway so...” Elisabeth muttered, still rubbing her arms, more because she didn’t know where to leave her hands than because of the cold. 

Reid shed off his coat, looking at Elisabeth. She was wearing a short-sleeved black dress that seemed to follow the curve of her body quite perfectly, with dark jeans. Somehow she looked both elegant and comfortable at the same time and Reid suddenly felt a little flustered. 

“Here, let me take it,” Elisabeth said, eager to have something to do and she took his coat and put it on the rack. “Oeh, it’s really wet. Is the weather that bad?”

Reid ruffled up his hair a bit, to shake the water out, then tucked it behind his ears. “Yeah. It’s kinda rainy,” he said and made a face. “Those clouds have come here from the coast of... “ he started, but he stopped himself. “Well it doesn’t really matter where they came from, but there’ll probably more rain the coming days. Maybe even snow. Also I kind of.. ehm well, I got lost..” 

He almost seemed embarrassed to admit it. Elisabeth laughed and couldn’t resist to tease him a little about it. 

“What, you? I thought you were a map-expert with an eidetic memory? Couldn’t you bother with taking a look at google maps before you took of?”

Reid looked confused. “Google maps? Is that like some sort of app?” 

“An app? Well, no, not exactly. I mean it technically is an app too, but it’s also.. well, a map? Except it’s all the maps of the world, in one place. A place called the internet. You ever go there?”

Reid rolled his eyes. “You sound like Garcia. Yes, I do visit the internet from time to time. Just not to consult a map. Things that can be done on paper ought to be done on paper.” 

Elisabeth nodded. “Well, I agree with that. To a certain extent,” she added . She sounded thoughtful, but inside she was extremely glad they were casually talking and arguing again, as they had before. 

“Anyway, I’m glad you’re here.” She looked at Reid, suddenly very serious again. “Really, I’m happy you took my invitation.” 

Reid smiled. “I was happy to receive it,” he answered, and he meant it. 

The invitation had certainly taken him by surprise, though. He’d thought that he’d completely blown his chances the other night. When he asked Emily for advice the next day he’d tried to tell her as little about the situation as possible, but as she could guess half of it, she had told him to go and apologize. 

Reid found, however, that he couldn’t bring himself to go to Elisabeth in her office, where surely there would be gossiping colleagues. Besides, what if she didn’t want to see him at all? So he waited for her to come to the bau, but she didn’t and after a few days he’d decided to give her the letter, through Garcia. He hadn’t expected an answer so soon and he definitely hadn’t expected an invitation for dinner at her house, but here he was.

They awkwardly stared at each other for a moment, before they remembered that they were still standing in the hallway.

“Please, go inside,” Elisabeth said and gestured for Reid to go further into the living room. “Make yourself at home.”

Reid turned around and stepped into the living room. It was quite small, but it was definitely his kind of house. The walls were lined with bookshelves and at the centre of it was a large purple couch, that faced the tv. 

The room was warmly lit by the light of several lamps that were strategically placed throughout the room. There were a few small ones in the bookcases, two on either sides of the television, one large one next to the couch and one more on the wall behind a large armchair in the corner. 

For some reason he thought it was very particular that she’d chosen not to use the lamp fitting on the ceiling for one big lamp that would have lit everything, as most people would have, though he wasn’t quite sure what this said about her as a person. 

Elisabeth walked up to a stereo installation that was hidden in the right corner of the room, in the bookcase. 

"What kind of music do you like?" She asked. For some reason they'd never talked about music and she found it difficult to guess what dr. Reid would listen to. 

Reid shrugged. "Classical, mostly... But you can play whatever you like."

"I don't have that much classical I'm afraid," she told him and made a face. She looked through her large stack of cd's and finally picked an instrumental jazz-cd, hoping that it would set the right mood. Whatever that might mean.

When she turned around she saw Reid was still standing in the middle of the room, his hands in his pockets. He looked like he came from the start of the twentieth century, with his white shirt and dark-grey vest, lit by the warm, dim light in the room. Or from a gangster movie in the fifties, even though he wasn’t wearing his gun holster or tie. 

“You can sit down if you want,” she encouraged him. “Or do you wanna see the rest of the house?” 

“Eh.. whatever you want. I don’t know. Is there much to see in the rest of the house?” 

She laughed. “Oh yes, it’s actually really big. Behind that door right there are the stairs to my secret dungeon and the other one leads to the batcave.”

“Aha,” Reid said. “So... not that much.” he added with a twinkling in his eyes as he walked to the couch and sat down.

Elisabeth snorted. “Well if it takes that much to impress you, I might as well be honest. It’s just the tiniest bathroom you’ve ever seen and an incredibly messy bedroom. My kitchen’s nice, tho. Speaking of which, do you like thai food?”

“Yeah sure..” Reid said and he suddenly frowned as something dawned on him. “Where do you eat?” The only table seemed to be a small coffee-table between the couch and the tv, but Elisabeth pointed to the corner next to the doorway. 

There was a table with three chairs, all propped up against the wall so that you didn’t notice them when you came in.

“It’s one of those tables that you can make bigger by adding a piece in the middle,” she explained. “I figured I’d need a table that doesn’t take much space, because my apartment is small and I hardly ever use the dining table anyway. I mean, I mostly eat alone and I don’t mind working and eating while sitting on the floor.” 

Reid nodded understandingly, not showing his surprise. For some reason he hadn’t thought her to be the type who lives alone. He’d been surprised to hear that she didn’t have a boyfriend, for starters, but he’d thought that she at least would be living with a roommate, or else be the kind of girl who invites lots of friends over to her house. 

“I’ll be back in a sec.” Elisabeth promised Reid and she disappeared into the little kitchen. 

For a while he just sat on the couch and listened to the warm sounds of the jazz-music and the clattering of plates and cutlery in the kitchen. When he heard an exceptionally loud clatter, he decided to take a look. 

“Everything okay in here?”

“Yeah, it’s fine.” Elisabeth pushed back a strand of hair that had escaped from behind her ear. “I’m just a little clumsy and my house is a total mess. I opened a cabinet and some things nearly fell out... that’s what you heard. Anyway, food will be ready in a few minutes..” 

Reid looked around, taking everything about the tiny kitchen in to add to his mental profile of Elisabeth. Not that there was much to see. She had an elegant wooden counter, a fridge, an oven and a tiny table that was cluttered with pans and cake tins. The walls were a soft, unobtrusive shade of pink. The only remarkable thing was the row of dried flowers, mostly roses, that were hanging upside down, lining the ceiling. 

She saw Reid looking at them and smiled to the ground, as if she felt embarrassed. 

“Now you probably think I’m one of those pink girly kind of girls.” She said. 

“No, I like it.” He said. “I think you couldn’t be that kind of girl if you wanted to.” He added.

For a moment she looked at him, puzzled, trying to figure out what exactly he meant by that, but then she shrugged. “I guess I just like flowers. My grandmother used to have all the rooms in her house decorated like this. I figured it would give the kitchen a little... personal touch.”

“It does.” Reid told her. He walked back into the living room, walking along the walls to see what kind of books were in her bookcases. 

After a few minutes he heard a “ding” and Elisabeth came out with two steaming carton cups. 

She smiled apologetically. “It’s nothing fancy, but I’m not a really great cook. I didn’t want to poison you on the first time you came here, so I figured I’d best just get some easy food. It’s from a really good toko down the street, though.”

Reid sat down on the couch and she sat down next to him, after she handed him his cup. She folded her legs beneath her, careful that her dress wouldn’t go up too far, and was about to start eating when she saw Reid’s expression.

“What’s wrong? You said you liked thai food, right? I have something else if you want..” She said anxious, completely misreading the horror on his face. 

“No! No, it’s not the food!” Reid hastily said. “It’s just ehm.. do you have..?” He said and made a face as he held up the chopsticks that she’d put into the carton as manner of cutlery. 

She laughed. “Seriously? You don’t know how to eat with chopsticks?” 

“No,” Reid whined. “Why does everyone thinks that’s so funny? I mean, why would you eat with these if you can just use a fork? It’s not like you’re going to knit your noodles into a scarf before you eat them.” He said, clearly very distraught. 

Elisabeth laughed even harder, throwing her head back. 

“It’s not funny, Elisabeth!”

“Alright,” she gave in. “I’m sorry, you’re right. I’ll get you a fork.” 

As she got up to get him a fork she thought about the flutter she’d felt in her stomach as he’d said her name. 

When she’d sat down and they’d both started eating, she apologized again. 

“My mum loves every kind of eastern food. I used to hate it as a kid, but I’ve kind of grown to like the taste. Either way, she did make sure that I could eat with chopsticks. She was like a pro with these things, she used them for practically everything but soup and bread.”

Reid smiled. “She sounds nice.” He was silent for a few moments. Then he added, while looking down at his food. “My mum wasn’t someone who bothered with those kind of things. Sometimes she hardly bothered with eating at all.” 

Elisabeth didn’t know what to say to that, so they both sat in silence for a little while, just eating and listening to the music. When the cd was finished, Elisabeth got up to put on a new one.

This time she picked one from a singer-songwriter who made country-ish songs. She always liked those kind of slightly melancholic songs, that somehow seemed sad and comforting at the same time. Maybe they were comforting _because_ they were a little sad, she thought. Either way, the soft guitar pattern always seemed to have a soothing effect on her and after the first few notes she already felt as if someone had laid a soft blanket around her shoulders. 

“Do you like this kind of music?” She asked Reid, a little bit frightened that he might say that he hated it. 

He didn’t say that. Instead he listened to it intently, nodding his head. “I don’t know many songs like this, to be honest. But I like this one. Who made it?” 

“Oh, just some british singer-songwriter... his name’s Johnny Flynn. His lyrics are alway a little cryptic, but I love his guitar-play and voice.” 

For the next few songs they just chatted about things they liked, things they didn’t like, things they’d read, things they’d heard... all kinds of things. 

Their noodle cups were long empty and lying on the table when Elisabeth decided it was time for a cup of tea. They patiently waited in the kitchen for the water to cook, still talking about meaningless things and when it was done she showed him her impressive collection of flavours of tea. Reid couldn’t help but laughing at her for having so ridiculously many kinds of tea -not that he was surprised, though- and she pretended to be offended. 

They both sat back down with a hot, damping cup of tea and Elisabeth folded her legs beneath her again.

Reid felt sorry he hadn’t taken his shoes off when he came in. It was hard to find a comfortable position to sit in, where he could still look at Elisabeth. On the other hand, it would feel a little too familiar to be walking around on socks. He was quite sure that that belonged on another level of friendship. 

 

The thought made him wonder. At what level of friendship were they? Elisabeth had made it pretty clear that she wanted to be there for him, but Reid felt like everything was going a little too fast. No matter how fast his brain could think, when it came to emotions he always seemed to be several steps behind on everyone else. But he felt like he could trust Elisabeth. He wanted to trust her, really bad, even though he’d trusted people before who didn’t turn out to be trustworthy. 

At the same moment Elisabeth decided that it was time to take the conversation up to the next level. After all, she hadn’t just invited Reid over to discuss whether or not the new star wars movies were better than the old ones. 

She decided to jump into the heavier subjects head-first. 

“So, are you going to tell me, or what?” She said, her expression kind. 

“Tell you what?”

“You know what I mean.” 

Reid looked into her light brown eyes -so kind and encouraging- and found that he really wanted to talk to her, and he decided he’d have to trust her. 

He sighed. “Have you ever heard of the Tobias Hankel case?” He asked, not meeting her eyes, but studying the carpet as if it were something fascinating.

“Yes...” she answered, wondering if she should reveal how much of his problems she’d already guessed. 

“Then you probably heard that he... that after that I had...” His voice trailed off. 

“He drugged you, didn’t he?” She said softly, carefully. 

Reid just nodded, still looking at the carpet, his mind clearly somewhere else. He was quiet for a while. The country cd was still playing. 

“A little while ago, there was another case.” He continued. “There was this kid... he was shot. In front of me. And I couldn’t stop it. Technically he wasn’t even the victim, but still... I felt so out of control. It reminded me of being trapped in that barn, not being able to stop Tobias, or actually his father, from killing, not able to stop Tobias from hurting himself.”

 

“I’ve been clean for a long time, but after this case... I’ve been having these..” He frowned as he searched for the right word. “ _Cravings._ the only way to keep them at bay has been focussing on my work, but I can’t even seem to concentrate on that anymore. Maybe it’s the nightmares. Usually I can go quite long without sleep and when I’m really exhausted I can sleep anywhere, even on the plane, but now...” He rubbed his eyes with the palm of his hand, careful not to spill tea in his lap. 

He finally looked at Elisabeth. “So, that’s why I was at the office so late last week. I just figured that if I didn’t go home at all...” 

“.. you couldn’t make a slip.” Elisabeth finished his sentence. 

He nodded. 

Elisabeth got up again. “This calls for something stronger than tea, don’t you think?” 

She came back from the kitchen with two glasses and a bottle of something Reid couldn’t identify by the color, but was surely a lot stronger than tea.

She stopped before she got to the couch, arching an eyebrow. “You don’t have any problems with alcohol, do you?” She asked, but Reid could tell she was joking and he let out a laugh. 

“No. Dilaudid ánd alcohol would be a bit much, don’t you think?” 

Elisabeth let out a sharp breath. “Dilaudid. Jezus. That’s strong stuff...” 

Again Reid let out a short, humorless laugh. “Yeah. I know.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean..”

“It’s okay.” 

She handed him his glass, with a bottom of liquor in it. 

“Thank you, for telling me.” She said, when they’d both downed their drinks. 

“Thank you, for listening.” He answered. “Anyway, it’s getting late. Shouldn’t I be heading home? I’m sure you have things to do..”

Elisabeth looked at the clock. “Oof. It’s really late.” She looked at him uncertainly. “Do busses still even ride at this hour?”

“I think so. There’s also such a thing as night buses, right?” 

“Okay, just go home when you want to.” she said and smiled at him. “I’m just gonna clean the kitchen up a little.”

Reid felt, much to his surprise, that he was actually feeling tired. Not the endless, exhausted kind of tired he’d been feeling constantly lately, but an actual drowsy, sleepy kind of tired. He kicked off his shoes and lay down sideways on the couch. He closed his eyes. Only for a second, he promised himself. For a little while he just listened to the sounds from the kitchen. _Maybe that’s why I can’t sleep,_ he thought to himself as he felt his mind slowly slipping out of consciousness. _It’s always so quiet at my place..._ He let the soft sounds of the guitar and the slightly hoarse voice of the singer on the cd wash over him until the words dissolved and he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. 

When Elisabeth came out of the kitchen, she found Reid sleeping on his side, his hands under his head and his knees pulled up, the cd still playing. He looked wonderfully innocent and peaceful, and she smiled at the endearing sight. She couldn’t resist watching him sleep for a few moments. Then she got a blanket from her bedroom and carefully laid it over him, before taking off to her own bed. 

The sound of his breathing seemed to follow her inside the bedroom, even though she closed the door and she fell asleep imagining his breath was right beside her, instead of a room away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and yes, Johnny Flynn is an existing singer, you should definitely listen to his songs (he's really awesome okay and I was listening to his songs while writing this chapter cuz I thought it was the kind of thing Elisabeth would like too..) :)


	8. "date"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elisabeth gets an idea for helping Reid...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello, I'm soooo sorry I didn't post for so long. I stopped watching criminal minds a littel while ago so I'm kind of out of it I guess, but I'll try to finish this fic anyway. I just hope I won't start writing too much out of character. I really hope people still want to read about Elisabeth and Reid :) Let me know if you guys like it! and I'll try to upload the next chapter about their date (and about Elisabeth's plan of helping Reid) really soon!

When she woke up, Reid was gone, as she’d expected. He’d left the blanket neatly folded on the arm of the couch and when she picked up an empty glass from the table she noticed he also left a note. She opened the folded piece of paper. It didn’t say much. Just, “I enjoyed last night. Thank you.” 

She smiled to herself and laid the note on one of her bookshelves. She ran her fingers over some of the bookcovers, and suddenly an idea came into her head. An idea of how she could help Reid. 

Turning the idea around in her head, she went back to her room to brush her teeth and get dressed. Standing in front of her closet she spent so much time pondering over what to wear, that she was running late. Finally she settled on a blue blouse, tucked into a skirt, and decided to buy something for breakfast on her way to the office. 

Just before she went into the office she stopped to check her reflection in a window. She wiped some bread crumbs from her cheek and ruffled up her hair a bit. She put on some lipstick. Then took a tissue out of her bag to wipe it off again. She checked out her reflection one more time and sighed. It’d have to do. 

The rest of the morning was usual, boring even. Nothing interesting happened until the afternoon, when she had to go up to the BAU to copy some documents, and she overheard Morgan and Prentiss talking. 

Apparently, the profilers had gotten used to their weekly cups of coffee. Elisabeth’s mind, however, had been far too occupied with Reid this morning to think about getting coffee for the team. Besides, she’d been far too late to sneak into the office unseen. Now Morgan and Prentiss were discussing this sudden change in the pattern, and what it could mean. Which also stirred up the everlasting question as for _who_ bought them the coffee in the first place.

“Do you think he just got tired of it? Or maybe his finances ran low. That coffee ain’t that cheap.” Morgan pondered. 

“Why do you say he? Why do you assume it’s a man?” Prentiss replied.

Elisabeth grinned. 

“Hey.”

She turned around and looked directly into Reid’s smiling face. He was smiling more widely than she’d seen him do in a while and she smiled back. 

She thought about what had come into her mind this morning. “Hey. Listen, I really liked hanging out yesterday.”

“Me too.” Reid grinned. “hanging out’, that sounds like we’re teenagers.” 

Elisabeth laughed, too. “Yeah, well. What do I call it then, a date?” She said it jokingly, but they both flustered a little. 

“Hanging out is fine.” Reid said eventually, and Elisabeth couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed. 

“Anyway,” she resumed. “I was kind of hoping you’d like to come by again tonight. I think.. well, maybe I have an idea of how I could.. help you.” 

Reid frowned a little, but before he could object she reassured him that she knew he didn’t _need_ any help.

“It’s just an idea. Plus I like ‘hanging out’ with you. Would you like to come by again?”  
“Of course.” Reid told her. 

“Wait, you guys are ‘hanging out’?” Morgan suddenly appeared behind Reid and slapped him on the back. “Finally!”

“What do you mean, finally?” said Reid, who had been quite oblivious to all the rumors that went around about him and Elisabeth. “Besides, we just had dinner at her house. Nothing special. People can invite each other over, right?” 

“Of course pretty boy. Let me give you a little tip, though,” Morgan said as he turned towards Reid as if he was going to tell him some secret. He cast a sideways glance to Elisabeth. “Don’t say a date was ‘nothing special’ in front of the girl, unless you really want her not to call you again.”

“What? No, I didn’t mean.. I mean, it wasn’t even a date, it was..” Reid looked very distraught. 

Morgan winked at Elisabeth, who just laughed at Reid’s awkwardness. “It’s okay,” she reassured Reid. “Besides,” she turned to Morgan, “he’s right. It was nothing special. We just ate noodles from the microwave and we talked about movies and stuff. Nothing fancy for you to fangirl about.”

Morgan threw his hands up in surrender. “Okay, fine. Besides, I don’t fangirl about anything. I can’t wait to tell Garcia though. She’ll fangirl enough for everyone in the building.”

He started walking away, but Elisabeth stopped him. “No way, Garcia’s gonna kill me if she hears this from you before I’ve told her. I was planning to drop by her office in a couple of minutes anyway.”

“Sure. I wouldn’t wanna mess with the girl-code.” Morgan winked again and walked away with his usual swagger.

Elisabeth turned back to Reid. “Soo, I see you tonight?”

“Sure. Do you want me to bring the food this time? I know a place that sells the best pizza in town.”

“That’d be great.” She smiled at him and waved a little awkwardly as she walked away. 

\--

“OH MY GOD, are you kidding me? He SLEPT at your place? What else happened? I demand to know every single gross detail.”

Morgan had been totally right about Garcia’s fangirling. She was practically jumping through the roof with excitement and Elisabeth was almost sorry to disappoint her.

“I’m telling you, nothing happened! No gross details! Really. He didn’t even drool on the couch.”

“Ew. That would’ve definitely been gross, but not the kinda gross I was looking for...”

“I know. But he really just slept at my place because he fell asleep when I was cleaning up the kitchen and I didn’t want to wake him. The poor guy looked so exhausted..”

Garcia sighed. “You two are just annoyingly adorable and boring at the same time, did you know that?”

Elisabeth laughed. “We’re not a reality-soap, Penelope. We’re actually people, with feelings and stuff, besides entertainment.”

“I know, honey. It’s just, I can _tell_ that you guys like each other.”

Elisabeth looked pensive. “I think you’re right. I mean, I’m pretty sure I like him, and I think he likes me too, but.. I just think that he’s got enough going on in his own life right now to worry about. Girls are the last thing he’s thinking about, probably.”

“Not _girls_ ” Garcia corrected her. “Just you.” 

“That’s even worse, don’t you think? Besides, do you know if he’s ever had a girlfriend before?”

“Nope, before you I hardly knew if he was straight. But Morgan probably knows more about Reid’s love life than I do. Maybe I should interrogate him..”

“No, nevermind. I’m not looking for a relationship with Reid anyway. Not yet, at least.” 

“Ugh, fine. As long as I’m the first to hear all the news, okay?”

“Of course.” Elisabeth smiled at her, realising that Garcia _would_ be the first person she’d tell things like that. Other things too, actually. It occurred to her that Garcia might slowly be becoming her best friend. Of course, some of her co-workers were nice enough to call “friends” and she had some friends from high school with whom she still called or went out sometimes, but in the past few months she’d grown very fond of Garcia in all her colorfulness. 

“See ya, Penelope.” 

“See ya.” Penelope swivelled her chair back towards her desk and went back to work. Elisabeth went back to her desk, too, but her thoughts were already with her “date” - that wasn’t really a date - with Reid that night.


	9. just listening to you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elisabeth helps Reid in a very special way. Will they finally admit to their feelings for each other?

Reid kept his end of the bargain: when he showed up at Elisabeth’s doorstep he was holding two large boxes of pizza. He still had his collar turned up against the cold but unlike the previous night, it wasn’t raining. 

Patiently he waited for the door to open. He was extremely curious, though, to see what Elisabeth had meant when she's said she knew how to help him. He'd wanted to tell her that even being with her was helping him -it had been weeks since he'd slept as well as he had last night on her couch- but he hadn't known how to say it, so he kept quiet.

He heard her fumble with the lock and found himself wondering what she'd be wearing tonight. Immediately after the thought entered his head he frowned to himself. He'd never paid attention to people's clothes before. 

Before he could think about it further, the door opened and revealed a smiling Elisabeth. As soon as he saw her face, Reid couldn't be bothered to think about clothes anymore anyway. As a matter of fact, every thought seemed to have been wiped off his mind upon seeing her smile.  
It made his head strangely clear, filled with nothing but her, like static noise. It was a feeling that was completely unfamiliar to him. His mind had never stopped thinking, making noise, wandering around. It had never been quiet in his head. 

He smiled back to her, feeling almost sedated, but not like when he'd used drugs. More like a blissful, drunken kind of sedated. 

He stepped inside and handed her the pizza boxes. She took them from him, carefully making sure they didn’t fall. 

“Hey,” he said, because he really couldn’t think of anything else to say. 

“Hey” she said back and smiled at him comfortingly. “I’ll bring these to the kitchen and get us some plates,” she said, pointing with one hand at the pizza boxes balancing on her other hand and disappeared into the house. 

Reid took off his coat, then hesitated about whether he’d keep on his shoes. In the end he decided to keep them on. He didn’t intend on sleeping at her couch again; last night he’d just been so tired he’d accidentally fallen asleep. 

When he entered the living room, he noticed something that hadn’t been there the day before: a huge pile of books on the coffee table. He walked up to it and examined the books. Some of them he’d heard about, or even read, some of them not. 

Elisabeth came in, holding two enormous plates with pizza. She placed them on the coffee table and looked at Reid, who gestured at the pile. “What were you doing with these?”

She blushed, like it was a secret, but there was also a mischievous light in her eyes, like she was about to reveal something exciting. She sat down on the couch cross-legged. Reid sat down next to her. 

She drew a deep breath, her eyes still shining with a shy sort of excitement. “I’ve been thinking..” she started. “Do you remember I said it’s not right to read a book as fast as you do?”  
Reid nodded and smiled at the memory. 

“Well, at the time I was joking,” she continued, “but.. I figured that, well, drugs are kind of an escape, aren’t they? A way out of reality.” 

Reid didn’t smile know. He knitted his eyebrows, wondering where she was going with this, though a suspicion started to rise within him. He nodded slowly. 

Elisabeth wasn’t looking at him while she spoke, afraid he might get angry with her for bringing up such a stupid idea, but she still continued explaining. 

“Drugs aren’t the only way to do that, though. Most people escape into fiction... I always do, anyway. But I suppose, that, because you read so fast, books must hardly give you any escape. So I figured, that maybe if I would read them to you...” Her voice trailed off, giving Reid time to let the idea sink in. After a few moments she’d gathered enough courage to look up into his eyes. 

To her incredible relief, they weren’t full of rejection, but kind and considering. A little surprised as well; whatever he’d been expecting, it wasn’t this. 

As Reid looked into her eyes, he felt a warm surge of affection spread through his heart. He was sure nobody in his life had ever made him such a genuine and kind-hearted offer, even though it was a slightly ridiculous idea. He smiled at her. “Thank you. That’s... extremely sweet of you. But do you really think it would work?” he asked, trying hard not to sound too skeptical. 

“It might.” She shrugged. “I know it’s not exactly how addiction works, but you’re already clean, right? You just need something to keep the cravings at bay and I think that focussing on something - other than your work - will definitely help.” She looked at the ground and opened her mouth as if she wanted to say more. 

She closed it again and swallowed. Finally she said, “you know, you’re not the first person I know who’s struggling with this. My...” she swallowed again, clearly having a hard time talking about this. Reid looked at her intensely.

“My brother had a drug addiction too. He was a lot older than me, I was only a little kid, but I remember.. I remember that whenever he came home, out of his mind with some pill or another, I would read my books to him. It always seemed to calm him down.”  
“Did he.. did he conquer his addiction?”

She didn’t have to answer. The look in her eyes said enough. 

“I’m sorry.” 

She pulled her legs up to her chest, hugging them with her arms. “But like I said, you’re already clean. I don’t think he ever got to that stadium, so it’s different.”

“Besides,” she added with a sly smile, suddenly continuing on a higher note, though the sadness in her eyes didn’t completely disappear, “I wouldn’t mind your company.” 

That convinced Reid. There was something about the way his stomach lurched every time he heard her voice that made him think that keeping her company itself might replace the cravings he’d felt lately, but her idea would give them an excuse to ‘hang out’ without things getting complicated. 

He leaned over to the pile of books and checked the covers again, pushing his hair, that had fallen in front of his eyes by the movement, back behind his ear. 

“Okay, I’m in. So.. where do we start?” 

A smile exploded all over Elisabeth’s face. She bit her lip to keep herself from squealing with excitement.

“Well... I don’t know, what do you like?” 

Reid made a face. “Ehm, I don’t think those are the kind of books you’re looking for... They’re mostly russian or about mathematics. Why don’t we start with your favorite?”

Now it was Elisabeth’s turn to make a face. “Never ask a bookworm about their favorite. That’s like.. I don’t know what, but it’s impossible.” She took the first one from the pile and waved at him with it. “I do hope you’ve read this already?” she said in a stern voice.

It was Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Reid made a face, afraid to admit that he’d never actually read or seen anything Harry Potter- related. 

Elisabeth gasped, pretending to be personally offended by this. “That is absolutely outrageous! You have missed out on a childhood. I know it’s a children’s book, but just pretend that you’re seven, okay?” 

Reid smiled sadly. She was right, he hadn’t had much of a childhood and he didn’t think pretending he was seven would improve the experience of listening to Harry Potter right now, but he didn’t tell her. Instead he smiled and ate his pizza and listened to her as she got all excited, telling him how much of a fan she’d been of the series. 

Apparently, or so she told him, the names of all the characters were different in Dutch. He turned to her, confused. 

“Wait, what? In dutch? How do you know?” 

“I lived in Amsterdam for most of my childhood, but we moved to America when I was eight, so I hardly have an accent anymore.”

“I’ve never been to Amsterdam.” 

“You should, it’s beautiful.” She looked at him with twinkling eyes. “I’ll take you, someday.” 

Reid didn’t know how to answer to that. Luckily, he didn’t have to, because she was already talking about Harry Potter again. 

He told her to eat her pizza before it went cold: they had plenty of time to read after dinner. She smiled sheepishly and obeyed. A strand of hair had fallen in front of her face, and only the grease and tomato sauce on his fingers kept Reid from pushing it back behind her ear. 

When they were finally done and all the remnants of dinner had been brought to the kitchen, they sat down again, settling themselves comfortably between the cushions, and started. 

Elisabeth turned out to be a good reader. Reid could almost see dumbledore placing the baby on the doorstep of his new parents and she read the characters all in different voices, without being too comical. Despite the doubts he’d had about it earlier, Reid found himself actually getting hooked on the story. Maybe there was even something about poor little Harry with his glasses and unexplainable abilities that reminded him of himself. Suddenly she stopped and Reid looked up, startled. She pointed at her throat. “I’m just gonna get something to drink.” 

“Do you like it so far?” she called to him from the kitchen. 

“Yes, I do! I want to know what happens next! Are they actually going to let him play on the quidditch team or not?” 

“I knew you’d like it.” She beamed. 

When they finally stopped reading and Reid put on his coat, it was way past midnight and they were almost halfway through the book. 

That night, Reid slept well, again, even though he slept in his own bed. Some part of him, however, wished it hadn’t been his own bed he’d been sleeping in...

\---

It became a kind of routine for them, and a known secret in the bau. Not every night - but definitely most nights - Reid would show up at her doorstep with food, and she’d read to him. They didn’t always just read, though. Sometimes they watched movies together, or series, and sometimes they just talked. 

Elisabeth loved seeing Reid open up to her. By the end of the first week, he kicked his shoes off as soon as he came in. Maybe with anyone else, it wouldn’t have felt like anything special, but she knew that with Reid it was an indication that he trusted her, and it filled her with joy. He also became more and more talkative. Once upon a time, she’d thought Reid was the shy, quiet kind of nerd. Apparently, when you got to know him, he was quite the opposite of quiet. While she was reading to him, he would keep coming up with random facts about things discussed in the book, until she had to hit him with a pillow to shut him up. After that he would listen quietly. For about ten minutes....

Their “dates that weren’t dates” didn’t stay secret in the office for very long. Of course Elisabeth had told everything about them to Garcia and within days everyone knew about it. 

Even Hotchner heard about it. One day, when Elisabeth went to get tea, she almost bumped into him in the kitchen. Quickly she cast her eyes down. She was scared he would reprimand her for... well, for what exactly? She and Reid weren’t even dating. 

As it turned out, her concerns were unnecessary.

“You’re the girl who’s been hanging out with Reid, right?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“Good for you. And him. It’s time he got himself a girl, don’t you think?” 

Elisabeth couldn’t believe her ears. 

“Ehm, yeah I guess. We’re just hanging out, though, not dating or anything.”

“Oh, okay.” Hotch took a sip of his coffee. “Well, as long as you don’t distract him too much from his work, I’d say you kids should keep doing that.” He eyed her friendly. “He looks happy,” he added, and he smiled at her before walking back to his office. 

 

When they became sick of take-away food, Elisabeth looked up a couple of recipes they could try to make. Pressed together in the small kitchen they tried to cook whatever she’d bought, but it mostly resulted in disastrously over- (or under-) cooked dishes and a lot of laughter. After a little while, however, they started to manage making more complicated stuff than just pasta with tomato sauce and would take turns finding new exciting recipes. 

Quite quickly, they finished the first Harry Potter book. Then the second. Then the third. Elisabeth came up with other books that were her favourites. He’d asked her to read to him in dutch, even though he didn’t know the language. She’d started in a book called “a letter for the king” which she claimed was one of the best children’s books ever written. It had been strange to hear her speak in a language he wasn’t familiar with. It was a harsh language, a bit like russian, but then again completely different at the same time. After a few pages, however, she suddenly put the book away and took something else from the bookcase. 

“This,” she said, “was my absolute, absolute favourite. It’s written in german, but I read it in dutch of course. Do you know german?” 

Reid nodded. “Yeah, my mother used to read a lot of german books and poetry to me.”

“It’s called Tintenherz” she told him as she settled back onto the couch.

“Inkheart,” Reid translated. She started reading to him, cherishing each word, and Reid wondered how people could think german was a harsh or even ugly language. When Elisabeth spoke it, the words became soft and magical. 

 

Sometimes Reid would search through her shelves himself, or he brought one of his own books, from which he would read to her. 

It became another one of their games, finding the most ridiculous books in the library and proposing them to each other.

Sometimes they even brought that game to work. Reid would leave notes on her desk and she would return them, often in code. He always figured the code out in less than 2 minutes, but that wasn’t the point of it. She always made sure, however, that she wasn’t distracting him too much: they only talked in the breaks. Sometimes she couldn’t wait until the evening though. She’d brush by his desk and leave a book on top of it, not even waiting around to see his reaction. 

Today it was twilight she left on his desktop. Reid picked it up and made a face. 

“Seriously?” he called after her. “Are you sure about this?”

She just laughed and winked at him before disappearing out of the office again. JJ, Prentiss and Garcia looked at it and sighed collectively. “Aren’t they cute,” JJ said. 

“I’m just glad Reid is himself again,” Prentiss answered. “More than that, even. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him this happy.”

“Yess, I know. I’m just so glad my babies are finally dating.” That was Garcia, of course. “I’m telling you, I knew that girl was gonna change things around here the moment she first brought that coffee. I mean, you have to be such a kind person, to buy coffee for people you don’t even know, just to make their day.”

JJ and Prentiss gawked at her. Garcia looked back incomprehensive, oblivious to the huge slip she just made. 

“What?”

“It was Jones who was buying us coffee? All this time? And you knew?” Prentiss said.  
“And you didn’t tell us?” JJ added.

Garcia clamped a hand over a mouth. “Oh no. Oooh my god. I was not supposed to tell you guys that. I think.”

JJ laughed. Prentiss looked at the direction Elisabeth had disappeared in, her eyes filled with a sort of admiration. “I really like that girl.” 

 

That night they didn’t read twilight. Instead they read something Spencer had come up with a week ago. Elisabeth wasn’t quite sure when she’d stopped calling him Reid and started calling him Spencer. Just like she wasn’t sure when she leaned into him the first time they were reading, her back against his chest, his arm draped over the back of the couch. 

The book they were reading was Jane Eyre. It was the third victorian classic they were reading, preceded by Pride and Prejudice and Wuthering Heights. Reid had been surprised to hear Elisabeth hadn’t read any of those, just as she’d been surprised when he proposed to read them.  
He hadn’t proposed them because he was such a fan of the novels. When he read them himself, he’d never felt particularly gripped by the impossible romances, but he loved listening to Elisabeth reading them to him. Elisabeth was quite good at reading in different accents, and for these books she would use her most british one, which Reid found quite endearing. He remembered how he’d thought she reminded him of a Jane Austen character when they first met, and while she read he imagined her as the main character, dressed in old-fashioned victorian clothes, her hair hanging down in curls. He would imagine himself as mr. Darcy or another love interest, wooing her like an eloquent and charming gentleman. Of course he didn’t tell her about this; she just thought he really liked classics. 

Elisabeth actually started to like the old and strange use of language in them. She liked how those words from another era, so strange yet still understandable, felt in her mouth. Reading them out loud felt a bit like time-travelling.

She looked at Spencer from the corner of her eye. He was biting his lip, lost in the story, or maybe in some other thoughts, far away from here. His eyebrows were slightly creased and she longed so much to kiss away that frown, her lips on the soft skin on his forehead, she found herself biting her lips too. 

She forced her eyes back to the book. She couldn’t kiss him. It would make everything complicated and she couldn’t afford to make his life more complicated after they’d worked so hard to get it back on the rails. Kissing him now would be selfish, so she kept on reading. After a few lines, however, her voice faltered, because she felt his eyes on her. 

His green eyes that made it impossible to make any sense of the letters in the book. Suddenly she felt his hand touching hers.

“Here, let me. You’re tired, it’s my turn to read now.” She didn’t trust her voice, because his hand was still touching hers and she didn’t even risk looking at him, so she just nodded. It was not until he pulled the book out of her hands and started reading that she realised how tired she really was. She laid back her head and closed her eyes, letting Spencer’s voice wash over her. She wasn’t even listening to the words he spoke anymore; just the sound of his voice was enough. The hoarse edge of it, seeming simultaneously low and high, gave her goosebumps. 

“I’m gonna fall asleep,” she murmured. “Do you want to dance?”

Reid looked up, alarmed. “Dance? I’m a terrible dancer.”

A lazy smile curled around Elisabeth’s lips. “Nonsense.” she objected and pushed herself up from the couch. 

She rummaged through her cd’s until she’d found the right one. A few moments later, the swinging rock and roll of the fifties filled the room. She pulled Reid up from the couch as well.  
“Come on, it’s not that hard. Just move.” 

She gave the right example and moved her feet and hips in ways that weren’t exactly professional, but still left Reid mesmerizing about the complexity of it. 

“No, really, I’m not a good dancer,” he sputtered but Elisabeth would have none of it and grabbed his hands. 

“Look, you just jump around a little and move your hips like this.” 

Reid was still a little stiff, but the second song his shoulders already started to move on their own and by the fifth song they were both jumping around the room. 

Reid felt his body moving in a way it had never done before, so loose and in harmony with the music. He grabbed Elisabeth’s hand and twirled her around in pirouettes, laughing and stumbling as she twirled faster and faster. Her cheeks were flushed red from dancing, laughing and the wine they’d drunk earlier that evening. 

Afterwards, they both couldn’t really tell when the music had changed, but suddenly they found themselves dancing slowly and very close to each other to some ballad by the beatles. Reid had his arm around her waist and the fingers of his other hand laced through hers, like they were waltzing. Elisabeth rested her head on his chest, feeling his heartbeat against her ear.  
As Reid felt the smooth skin of her back through the fabric of her shirt. In the beginning, he’d loved looking at what she was wearing. Now, for the first time, he wondered what it would be like to see her without clothes. 

“I’ve never read you any poetry,” he said suddenly. 

“You’re right. Why not? I like poetry.” she answered, without lifting her head. 

Still slowly dancing, Reid softly started reciting. “The fountains mingle with the river, and the rivers with the ocean...”

Elisabeth smiled into his chest. 

“... and the sunlight clasps the earth, and the moonbeams kiss the sea. What is all this sweet work worth, if thou kiss not me?” he finished. 

The last lines came out as whispers and Elisabeth finally lifted her head to look at him. He looked into her large brown eyes, framed by her eyelashes and then he closed his eyes and softly pressed his lips against hers. He had to bend down a little to reach her. He felt her gasp at the sudden touch, but then she kissed him back. 

After only a fraction of a moment, however, she pulled back again. Reid felt his cheeks go red and he started to apologize. “I’m so sorry..”

“Don’t be.” She smiled at him. “It’s just.. do you really think we should do this? I mean, don’t you think it would make everything complicated and then maybe things get all screwed up and.. I don’t know. I just don’t want to lose what we have.” 

“You won’t. Why would it change things? I just.. I really like you. But if you don’t like me that way I understand..”

Elisabeth shut him up by standing on her tiptoes and kissing him softly. 

“I do. I do like you that way. I’m just scared, that’s all.”

“Scared of what?” 

“Losing you.”

Reid smiled at her. “Then you’re lucky I don’t intend to leave.” and he kissed her again. 

This time they both gave into it. Reid let go of her waist to lace his fingers through the hair at the back of her neck. Elisabeth arched her back and pressed herself closely against him. 

When they finally let go of each other, neither of them could tell how many time had passed. They looked at each other and giggled, both a little drunk with love. They kissed again.

Somehow they made their way to the bedroom, where they lay down, Elisabeth’s back towards Reid, his arm draped around her, hugging her to his chest. They didn’t take off their clothes that night. They both knew there would be many nights to come. They had all the time in the world to explore this whole thing and to explore each other. 

Just before he drifted into sleep, he heard her whisper it. “I love you.”

He pressed his face into the back of her head, smelling the scent of her hair, more satisfying than any drug on earth, and whispered it back. That night, he didn’t think for a moment about his job or the future or anything but the way her breath sounded in the dark. He didn’t have to worry about that: whatever his job might bring him in the future, he would have Elisabeth to help him through it. He was sure of that. 

When he finally fell asleep, it wasn't a dreamless sleep. But for the first time in years, his dreams weren’t nightmares about unsubs and victims. They were proper deams. And they were all about her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it guys! the end of their story! I hope you all enjoyed it :)  
> please let me know what you think of it when you finish!  
> I'm really grateful for everyone who has read this story all the way to the end! (srsly if you did that, I can't thank you enough and I can only tell you that it makes me reeeeaaalllyyyy happy if you liked it that much)  
> the poem Reid recites to her is called "love's philosophy" and it's written by Percy Bysshe Shelley (it's one of my personal favourite poems)  
> sooo that's it then! good bye!


End file.
